No revenge for these nerds: A fable for these fucking stupid times

 

It's 1986, I'm 11 years old, and even though we are in the peak era of home video, broadcast television is the biggest medium in the land. There are only two TV stations around here, so everybody is watching the same thing. We're all watching the A-Team, we're all talking about it the next day. It's either that or Coronation Street and fuck that noise. 

Even the biggest films didn't achieve total cultural saturation until they played for free on your home television. So when Revenge of the Nerds plays on the Saturday night movie slot, me and literally everybody I know is watching it. 

And while it's rightly judged for its many problematic elements, it's still a well-made movie with some genuinely funny characters and moments, and ends on a blatant plea for a little bit of empathy.

Holy shit, I thought as I wiped away my adolescent tears. Maybe people will be nicer to nerds after this. I actually believed this, and obviously could not have been more wrong.

On the geek-jock spectrum, I was definitely down the nerd end. Mainly because I refused to give up childish things like comic books and action figures and Doctor Who, and doubled down on all the obsessions instead. This was also the year I got glasses, and only absolute dorks wore glasses, everybody knew that.

I didn't really get bullied for being a nerd, because I was a big kid, even at that age, and I also hung out with a decent group of similar dork hulks. And whenever somebody tried to mess with me I'd just go full feral on them, and bullies can not be fucked dealing with the crazy kids, and that was easy to fake, although I do believe there are still people in this world who think I once used toilet water to brush my hair.

But I still remember that Monday morning after the Nerds screening, and the way the meatheads in every classroom replicated the boorish acts of the jocks in the first 90 percent of film, and were hanging out the window to scream 'NEEEERRRRDDDD' at any poor speccy kid that walked past. They had watched the whole movie, listened to the big climactic speech and did not learn a fucking thing.

They just picked up on the bits they liked, and missed the entire point of the whole goddamn enterprise, perpetuating the brutal ignorance and dumb malice of the fucking bad guys, rather than modifying their behaviour because they had been shown how hurtful and destructive that behaviour is.

This has happened to me several times since, when I thought a piece of pop culture might actually make things better, only for morons to completely misinterpret it for their own purposes and make it worse. I'll probably fall for it again, because I remain, as always, hopelessly naïve, and I'm still hoping for the best.

Nobody gave a shit when Revenge of the Nerds 2 came out, that joke was good for one movie and one movie only. Although it does still have a bitchin' musical number.

Fighting with Frank (part 10 of 13): Response. Acceptable.

- All-Star Superman #3 

Art by Frank Quitely 

Written by Grant Morrison

Digitally inked and colored by Jamie Grant 

Lettered by Phil Balsman

Losing sleep at 3am eternal

I still firmly believe there are exactly two kinds of people in the world. There are those who hear about that time the KLF burned a million quid in a thoroughly modern ritual, and think it was a bloody waste of money and they could have done a lot of good with that kind of cash instead of wasting it in a pointless exercise. 

And there are those that think who it was pretty fucking cool.

I know what side I'm on. How about you?

Finding some divine deposits in the Bank of Dave

You always know what you're getting with the cuddly and cozy British comedy-drama - a bunch of brilliant aged actors, some hot young thing in tweed, the tiniest touch of dark humour and lots of lovely life lessons.

They are the intellectual marshmallows of films, often obvious, and always easy to watch. I never expect much from them, but even the most average film can have some personally profound impacts.

Take the Bank of Dave film, which I couldn't help watching when it sprouted up on my feed. Based on a true story - I haven't had the bollocks to see how much of it actually happened - it's about a businessman who actually cares about the community he lives in and tries to help people who have been less fortunate than he has, something rare enough to merit an entire movie of its own, apparently

It was standard Sunday afternoon film fluff, with Rory Kinnear turning on the charm in the title role and Def Leppard showing up for a rousing finale. It's the kind of film that you expect to go in one ear and out the other, and I couldn't stop thinking about the mild philosophical questions about community and empathy that were raised by the film.

I've been dwelling on the idea a lot lately - that in an age where our global leaders are a bunch of intellectual and moral fuckheads, that you only really have the power to change things in your own local community, and hope that all goodness will flow from there. And this movie was full of people like that, just doing the right thing because it's the right thing, and that's all they need.

And I can't stop thinking - why aren't I doing more? I've got my own family to raise, and I think I'm taking care of them pretty well, but I could do more. I should do more, even on the smallest levels, and I'm looking at doing some volunteer work this year, and just helping who I can.

It was meant to be a bit of light entertainment, another twee comedy-drama to pad out the afternoon, but how inconsequential can it be if it changes my life, in the tiniest of ways?

When did Moira break bad?

Now that the Krakoa era is done, and that vegetable utopia is rapidly receding into the history of x-continuity, I can now look back and realise that I missed a tonne of the big beats that dropped during the sprawling storylines. 

I never read the story that explained why I should give a damn about a whole bunch of bloody swords, I never really understood any of the deal with Arakkro, and I totally missed Moira's heel turn.

I always liked Moira MacTaggert - in a world of mutant mayhem, she was always just trying to help. She was often dealt a rough hand, with an obviously abusive husband, some history with the eternally unobtainable Charles Xavier and a son who couldn't control his mutant powers enough to stop killing people. But Moira was always there to help out with the science, and inject some more basic compassion

When it was revealed that her big mutant power was the ability to live her life over and over, it was the most major role she ever had, but also diminished the character somewhat. Because she wasn't just there to help because it was the right thing, she was there because it was her ultimate destiny, a fate built up over lifetimes of manipulation.

And then something happened, and suddenly Moira was a cackling villain prepared to murder Mary Jane Watson because she was an inconvenient witness. The next time I saw her, she was a full on murder robot who seemed very passionate about genocide.

It probably happened in one of the big crossovers that I skipped over, but it still seemed so jarring to see the generally reliable Dr MacTaggert start to froth at the mouth. At least all that cybernetic shenanigans give an easy out for future comic creators who miss the old and kind Moira as much as I do.

The last Stray Bullet

I've been re-reading Stray Bullets lately, and it's still a great crime comic, with wild twists and turns, some startling characterisation and David Lapham's slick, moody artwork.

It's been an absolute pleasure to read the whole series again, or almost the whole series, because my local comic shop never got the final issue of Sunshine and Roses, and I've never been able to find a copy anywhere since, so I still have no fucking idea what is going down in that hospital.

As a reading experience, it's thematically mirroring the first big Stray Bullets series, where the last issue of that volume wasn't even published for years and years, leaving things similarly unresolved. We got there in the end, and I'm sure I'll get that last elusive issue #42, one day. I just have to be as patient as a heist crew waiting for their moment to strike. 

Back to comics by the kilo

We had to give up some of the finer things in life when we went back to live in my old home town last year - big concerts, great foods and the always excellent kilo sale at Arkham Comics in Auckland.

Jeremy and his crew at Arkham put on the kilo sale two or three times a year, and you get to go through a tonne of comic boxes and pay for your choices by weight. It roughly works out at about a dollar an issue.

And there is always a good mix of crazy stuff, not just the obvious trash found in most discount bins. Rare treasures, and surprisingly obscure titles. Lots of big titles from the big publishers (although never any Batman).

The main thing is that these are not for investment, because they are 100 percent all reader copies. Those rare treasures aren't going to put your kids through college, not with the cover only just hanging on. 

So I can pick up are some early 80s Green Lantern comics with some sweet Dave Gibbons and Keith Pollard artwork, and the official condition is shot to hell. But I don't care, because that's a lot of green-slinging I have never even seen before.

After being away from the kilo glory for the year, I've noticed some trends coming through, and there were definitely a lot more New 52, Rebirth and Young Animal comics from DC in the boxes. It's still a little stunning just how many comics DC put out in the past couple of decades, and there are entire runs of Animal Man and Doom Patrol comics that I never tasted, and now have the opportunity to indulge in. 

I also picked up a couple more of the DC 1M comics that I am currently mildly obsessed with collecting; and some John Byrne Fantastic Four, because I always think I've read all of Big John's FF comics, but there always seem to be more; and a handful of Superman comics from the sweet spot between the Crisis and the Death. Assorted other one-offs and annuals and various oddities.

Almost all of them will be sold on for cost price, and will be in my grubby mitts for a few months at most, but that's the circle of life, right? You can only hold onto this kind of four colour fun for so long, especially when you paid for it by weight. 

Three hot takes I gotta get off my chest

Everybody has their own hot takes on the relative merits of their entertainments. Your appreciation of various film, TV and music will always be utterly subjective, and while I tend to follow along with the herd like the big dumb animal that I am, I do have a few scorchers of my own. 

1. Voyager is better Star Trek than Deep Space Nine

A couple of years ago I went through the whole TNG/DS9/Voyager era of Star Trek at the pulsating rate of one episode a day, and discovered that the Next Gen crew will always be my favourite, because they were my crew when I was 12. This was no surprise, but it was the first time I watched all of Voyager, and it turned out to be much easier to dive into their world for an hour every night, than it was to take a trip to Bajor.

Deep Space Nine is brilliant space opera and says some gently disturbing things about the human condition in a way that none of its contemporary Treks managed, with an outstandingly charismatic cast. But It could also be an overall slog, especially when it all became more serialised, and the grand tapestry of the Cardassians and the blob people and the bloody prophets of Bajor could sometimes choke the life out of the series.

There is no doubt that Voyager had tonnes of clunky episodes, but it didn't matter, because something different was coming along in the next installment. The general cast of characters were exceedingly annoying, but that just made their small moments of emotional connection really hit. And occasionally you'd get an episode about the doctor or Chakotay that would be really striking. 

It helps that every acclaimed modern series is all about the long-form storytelling these days, so indulging in that antiquated episode of the week format feels weirdly refreshing. But on an episode to episode basis, I'd always rather be in the Delta Quadrant.

2. The best Faith No More album was the last one

Angel Dust will always be the purest Faith No More, it was an album on extremely high rotation when I got my first fulltime job, rocking around the factory to Be Aggressive and Land Of Sunshine (the sub-banner for this blog is usually the quote from that song), and swaying between the cookers on the factory floor to their full-blooded version of Midnight Cowboy. 

But if you asked me what the second best FNM album is, I'd go for the relatively recent Sol Invictus. Returning to the recording studio after years and years, the group produced a top-notch blast of funk metal, giving me everything I want in a more mature Faith No More album

Cone of Shame alone has all I could need - a ridiculously chunky riff, some throat-lacerating screaming and some top notch wailing in four minutes and forty seconds. But you also get the throbbing pulsations of the title track, and the straight and hilarious Motherfucker is never getting out of my skull. 

The earliest phases of the band are totally the sound of my youth, but their epic crankiness in the most recent album also makes them the sound of my current withered age.

3. Inherent Vice is greatest Paul Thomas Anderson film

It's doesn't make any kind of fucking sense, and that's what I like most about it, even among the stifling mood and extraordinary cast. It's the kind of thing I find deeply inspiring - I've been working on a three-novel series sparked by a single scene in Inherent Vice for the past 10 years.

And I could only go through the glorious mind games of The Master and There Will Be Blood so many times, but I could watch Joaquin Phoenix's stoned ramblings over and over again, and I have no idea what Martin Short, Jena Malone and Joshn Brolin are up to, but I am all the way into it. Also Reece Witherspoon has never been better.

Fuck yeah, I'm looking forward to his new one. It looks like all I want in my PTA.

Fighting with Frank (part 9 of 13): You must tell them!

- We3 #3

Art by Frank Quitely 

Story by Grant Morrison 

Coloring and digital inking by Jamie Grant 

Lettering by Todd Klein

Norman the Mormon (and other Funny Business)

Three great things about Funny Business, a New Zealand sketch comedy show from the late '80s which probably doesn't stand up very well anymore if I ever actually watched a whole episode again - 

* It gave some outrageously talented young local actors their first screen time - including the great Lucy Lawless

* It also had this one five-second sketch that I haven't been able to find online, where a crowd of people are standing around someone who has collapsed on the pavement, and a man with a briefcase comes up and says 'Let me through, I'm a doctor!', and the crowd parts for him and he just carries on, stepping through over the prone figure and carrying on his way in arrogant glory, and when I was 12 years old I thought that was the funniest fucking thing I had ever seen.

* And also the above song about Norman. Norman the Mormon. That song has been a personal earworm for many, many years, and I only actually listened to it again for the first time in decades this morning and I still remembered every word.

Avatar: Nothing more than a fun night at the movies

There will be another Avatar movie coming out this year and regardless of the quality of it, you can be assured of two things - it will make a fucking shitload of money, and there will be much sneering about how it hasn't made a big cultural impact.

I fully understand why the first thing happens - James Cameron knows how to make movies that lots of people want to see, because he offers up sights they've never seen on a movie screen before, while also having an innate grasp on tension and pacing that makes his stories feel very satisfying.

But I remain completely baffled by the sneering. That the Avatar films are basically worthless, because it hasn't made an impact on culture. There aren't a thousand rip-offs, and we're not all dressing up like giant smurfs. So fucking what?

It is a basically true statement. I can't remember the names of more than three characters, I've never seen any real fan fiction about it, and there aren't a thousand articles on the geek sites breathlessly going over any detail that leaks out.

These are all facts, but I don't get why it's such a bad thing. Who gives a shit if it doesn't leave a heavy footprint on wider pop culture in the same way the Marvel or Star Wars films have had? So what?

Sometimes you don't want a whole mythology pumped into your skull when you go to the movies, sometimes you just want to have a good time for a couple of hours, and that's it. You don't want to be deluged in content, you just want to dive into a fantasy world for a couple of hours, and then dive right out again, and just having a good time.

That's what I'll be looking for when I go to the next avatar - not just escapism from the wider world, but from the bruising weight of backstory and continuity and all the extremely boring context about the creation of a modern movie blockbuster. I'll be there for a good time, and that's more than enough. 

The beauty of a hard deadline

Many people who create things for a living treat deadlines with a kind of jocular disdain - a guideline that can be easily broken, rather than a rule that must be followed

There's a famous quote from Douglas Adams, who never had a deadline he didn't piss all over, about how much he loved the sound of them wooshing as they went by, and while Adams will always be one of my favourite writers, and certainly one of the most formative in my life, every time I hear that quote I just think he's a bloody arsehole.

Because I always meet my deadlines, unless it's something completely out of my control, or I have a very, very good explanation. It's a point of quiet pride that I treat the idea of finishing something within an agreed time with all due reverence.

Partly it's because it is just so selfish to blow through them. Nobody creates anything big on their own, and they might have an artistic partner who needs their contribution before they make the next step (especially in something like comics), or an editor or publisher who has made promises of their own, based on the timeliness of your own work. Somebody is waiting for the next step, and I can only read so many stories of Steve Gerber blowing deadlines off to go to party in Vegas, leaving artists in the lurch, before deciding that Steve was a bit of a jerk too. 

Saying you will have something done by a certain time is a kind of vow, and I fucking hate breaking those. Your word is sometimes all you really have in life, and pissing that away with tonnes of small broken promises is such a waste.

But I also love the discipline that comes with a proper deadline, meaning that you have to get up off your arse and actually do things. And if they don't work in the prescribed time, just do the best you can and move on. Not overthinking it, just doing it.

The need to actually do the work is the key of all creative endevors, and nothing will force you to sit down and do it quite like a hard deadline. That alone is worth sticking to the limit.

Drug cartels ain't got nothing on Carol Burnett

There is something so intrinsically right with the way that Saul Goodman slithers through life in both his own show and Breaking Bad, and somehow gets away with it because the people he mainly deals with are just as weak as he is, but when he comes up against the pure goodness of Carol Burnett, she is the one person he can't buy off or threaten, and ultimately brings him down.

It's not the ruthless drug cartels or the brutal US law enforcement officers that bring Saul's lawless rampage to an end, all it takes is one little old lady who is not putting up with his nonsense for one darn second.

In a world where those with power often seem to skate through life without ever facing any real consequences, it's  handy reminder that all it should take is one good person - and you couldn't get much gooder than the wonderful Ms Burnett - to say no, and all the schemes and plans come crashing down.

Murder Falcon: The road to true heavy

Almost every new comic book these days comes loaded with some kind of high concept - some crazy twist on the usual things, often with the volume turned all the way up to 11. That is all well and good, and can even be nothing more than pure entertainment, but grounding it with something real can give all that intensity a greater dimension.

That's what happens in Daniel Warren Johnson's quite wonderful Murder Falcon comic. I've liked Johnson's comics for a while - his Superman story in the Red and White anthology that came out a couple of years ago was an absolute stunner. So when my pal Nik, who has been on a Johnson kick for a while, insisted I read more of his work, I was only too happy to follow his recommendations.

So I started with Murder Falcon, and it's the most heavy metal comic possible, full of the power of the chunky riff, the intensity of a thick bass line and the throbbing propulsion of a 20-minute drum solo. It is ridiculously over the top, and with Johnson's energetic art style, full of slashing lines, eye-scorching colours and some very exact perspectives, it doesn't get much heavier

This is hardly a unique storytelling path to take - heavy metal and comics have had a long and occasionally very strange relationship - but the thing that Johnson's comics have that so many of these contemporaries lack is that it still has a foot in the real world, and that juxtaposition of the mundane tragedy of real life mixing with the insanity of interdimensional musical warfare is very tasty.

It's not just about the way the Murder Falcon with the bionic arm on top of your van is beating the snot out of eldritch nightmares from beyond the veil, it's about how someone deals with a cancer diagnosis and how they can lash out out at the people who really care about them.

These are the quiet bits between the shredding solos, and they're all the heavier for their silence.

A walking man

I recently had a medical checkup that produced some surprisingly good results, which is always nice. Despite a hideously indulgent diet - especially since I became a parent - I've not yet reached the stage in life where I have to cut back on the finer things in life, and can just barrel on ahead as usual. (The lovely wife, while obviously happy with the clean bill of health, is still hugely annoyed that I haven't learned a goddamn thing when it comes to my diet.)

It was particularly surprising because I don't really do a hell of a lot of exercise. I've never belonged to a gym of any kind, and seem to be lacking the sheer thrill of narcissism that leads to outrageous feats of physical exercise. I got too many books to read to worry about that stuff.

But I do walk. I walk a lot.

I've always enjoyed going on a good walk, every since I was a kid. I've never been much for running, but if I keep to a steady languid pace, I feel like I could walk forever. I do greatly overestimate how well I would do at the Long Walk, but sometimes I really do feel like I could walk for much longer than most people.

And I have walked for hours and hours, and not just on big hikes through the big country. Never anything competitive, and never anything organised, because that always takes the fun out of everything. Just walking for the sake of it.

Apart from the physical benefits - it really does feel the one exercise that we are evolutionarily designed to do, and I do very duly heartened after going off on a good ramble - it's the mental state of mind that comes with the slow transport of your own legs,. Having the time to actually take in all your surroundings, down to the merest speck of dirt, while also losing yourself in your own head during a long hike. 

My mind wanders far further than my legs can ever take me, as long as I'm not distracted by the burn in the thighs or anything like that. I think big thoughts and small, and sometimes I don't think about anything at all.

At least 80 percent of the ideas that end up published on this blog come from these walks - the idea for this one came while I was on the track down to Blockhouse Bay beach the other night. And the silent trod can also help get my thoughts in order about how much I enjoyed a film or book or other piece of media (one of the reasons I still love going to movies on my own is that I'm not pressured to have an opinion as soon as the credits roll, and can let things percolate).

It's a dynamite way to problem solve, and de-stress, and just feel at peace with the world around you. Taking one step at a time, every day, on this walk for life.

Fighting with Frank (part 8 of 13): Go for your guns, girls!!

- Hondo City Law: Babes with Big Bazookas 

Art by Frank Quitely

Script by Robbie Morrison

Letters by Gordon Robson

I'm always surprised by Benny Blanco from the Bronx

I've seen Carlito's Way a dozen times - with the pool hall bit, and the part where Big Al shelters under a trash can, it's a top five DePalma for me, easy - and every single time I think that this time Carlito is actually going to get on that train, and get away. 

I'm so caught up in that chase around the rail station, and the final dash to the train, I ignore the fact that you can see Benny Blanco from the Bronx running ahead of him, and he so nearly gets away from that awful life forever.

I still think that one day, one strange day, Carlito might actually make it onto that train. 

My all time top five rock concerts #5: Calling on!

It was as good as New Zealand rock music got. Right about the turn of the century -after years of nurturing local talent and competing against international behemoths - rock bands in Aotearoa had their own sounds and styles, and could stand tall against the best in the world..

Some of them were just fun - like Stellar and Tadpole and Goodshirt - but Shihad were the kings of the local rock scene, bringing absolutely mega riffs into existence for more than decade by that point. Peaking off the success of The General Electric, they were the best band to ever come to Timaru in that small and wonderful slice of spacetime.

And they came with Weta, led by the brilliant Aaron Tokona, who wrote these powerful songs that built into transcendent crescendos. Tokona had no time for the business, and never recorded as much as he should have, and passed away a few years ago. But that was all in the future, and he made a Tuesday night in Timaru feel eternal, with some chugging AC/DC shredding as they set up for their next epic.

And they also came with Fur Patrol, which was fine by everyone, because Julia Deans was unquestionably the coolest person in the country right then, and she still might be.

But it was Shihad we came for, and Shihad who delivered all the rock we would ever really need in our lives. It was before they went down the ill-fated Pacifier route, and when they ruled the country. Shihad were the band who pumped the heaviest of riffs right into your skull, and would have lyrics that could be surprisingly tender, and a band that would have a joint with you in the back alley behind the Loaded Hog. 

It was the greatest gig my home town had ever seen. All those bands had been there before and would be there again, but for one wonderful tour around the country, they were better than any other fuckers in the world.

My all top top five rock concerts #4: All the hits!

And sometimes it's just a case of getting exactly what you want, and hearing all the hits, and getting that perfect encore, and being happy, with few surprises.

Like seeing the Beastie Boys in their mid-2000s pomp - it's something I'll never have again, now that Yauch has merged with the infinite, but their performance that cool January night will stick in my head forever. Or going to Queens of the Stone Age when they were touring with NIN, and both bands were trying to outdo each other in showmanship and crowd reaction, or the time we went to Radiohead (not that one) and it was just an predictably unpredictable as expected.

I do think Alice Cooper is more of an artist than the popular perception, but an Alice Cooper show without the fake guillotine and the rubber bats, as well as No More Mister Nice Guy, wouln't feel like a proper Alice concert at all.

The only important thing is that once you've seen the kind of show, you don't repeat it. I saw Iggy Pop do his thing at a Big Day Out and it was so good, it was all the strutting and crowd surfing you could ask for, but then I saw him a couple of years later, and it was exactly the same. All the same tricks. And not quite as good, since the first time featured as many of the original Stooges who were still standing at the time, and the second time didn't.

It's like eating the best piece of cake, but then ruining it by going back for seconds, when you should have got a fuckin' sausage...

My all-time top five rock concerts #3: Against The Wall

Pink Floyd's The Wall was the very first album I ever really fell in love with, and I loved it hard. While I later turned punk and pretended I didn't know all the words for Nobody Home for a decade or so, my early teenage years were spent mired in Roger Water's lament for his dead dad, and his complaints about how hard it was to be a rock star.

Waters and the rest of the Floyd parted company a few years before that obsession really kicked in, so I obviously never got to see the legendary stage show they did for the album, but when Roger Waters came to do the show a few years ago, I was all in.

And when In The Flesh exploded on stage with all due pomp and circumstance, it was a proper overload, with lights and indoor fireworks and smoke and all sorts of things going on, and just when you think 'that's how you start a fucking show!', a goddam plane crashes into the side of the bloody stage.

It was a full-on sensory experience from there - as well as the practical effects of building the wall, the use of laser-sharp images on its blank face moved everything in whole new dimensions.

I've seen bigger shows with my own eyes - including a big Broadway hit from the front row, and the Beatles' Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas - and there was that one time I went to an AC/DC concert and could not even get my head around what I was seeing ('Oh, it's a giant inflatable sex worker on top of a full-sized replica train' I finally realized.)

But the most impressive thing I've seen in a concert was the first music I ever fell in love with, and first loves usually aren't that grandiose.

My all top top five rock concerts #2: Two-thirds of Neil

I've seen Neil Young play in real life twice, but I feel like I've really only seen two-thirds of what he can do.

One was a big festival set where he played almost all the hits (although the wife managed to straight up hallucinate one of them). It was incandescently good, I could see the music buzzing through the air when he did Cortez The Killer, and it was absolutely everything you would want in a Neil Young concert.

That's what I thought anyway, until I saw Young perform again with Crazy Horse a few years later, and it was fucking brilliant in a whole new way. He was just jamming with his mates, and the songs went on forever, and he played about three songs that everybody knew, and then a bunch  of deep cuts from decades of songs, and it was glorious in a whole new way. 

The disappointed faces of the other concertgoers who never got to hear him do anything they could sing along to - that just made it all the sweeter.

The only thing I need now is to see Neil in his most laidback, acoustic mode, warbling out Harvest Moon on a stage covered in straw. The big fella is not getting any younger, but I still have high hopes that I will get to see this Neil Young, and complete this particular circle of life.

My all time top five concerts #1: Seeing it all through another pair of eyes

As much as music ruled by life in my teenage and early adult years, I didn't actually go to my first big rock or hip hop concert until I was well into my twenties. I went to plenty of gigs at the dankest pubs in the South Island, and saw my mates get up on stage and do wonderous things, but I never got to see any of the really big international acts.

There were all well outside my reach, for starters. The mega gigs were all in the far-off big cities, and getting tickets, transport and accommodation would cost hundreds of dollars, when I was lucky to get $5 a week for the latest issue of Excalibur. The only people to have the willpower to get to the big shows were the obsessives like my mate Kaz, who went to ever damn U2 show that came within a few hundred miles. I was so fucking jealous.

But once I had disposable income of my own, and moved to the big city, I got to see almost all of the bands I grew up with, and always adored. I saw most of the Clash play with the Gorillaz, and Faith No More do their thing, and Massive Attack up close. Dozens of shows, to the point where I have to consciously remember what concerts I've been to. 

And this week, with all the horror in the outside world still pressing down on us all, I'm going to remember the five top gigs I ever went to. It's actually more like nine or ten, because I loved some very different shows for very similar reasons, but top five always sounds more appropriate.

None of them are going to be very surprising, or anyone that obscure, because it should be abundantly clear that I am the most basic of all bitches.

So of course I'm picking the one time I got to see the Manic Street Preachers. It was years after I'd been a committed Manics fan, but they did all the big parts. What made it so great was that it was the best example of introducing my lovely wife to something that meant a lot to me, because that's when I got to show her the glory of Nicky Wire.

We've been married for 20 years now, and she still doesn't give a damn about many of the things I'm into - she never got into comics, and I will never make a horror fan out of her - and that's absolutely fine, because everybody has their own things to be passionate about. But I can still slowly introduce her to the music that speaks to my soul, and she will sometimes fall for it harder than I ever imagined.

And so we are at the Manics gig in Auckland, and while we are waiting for the show to start, she wonders why one of the mike stands has an outrageous feather boa on it, and I say it's because Nicky Wire, and then she got a crash course in the eternal coolness of the bassist. Her later discovery of his love of tidying up the house only made it better.

It's happened a couple of times. Checking out the late and truly great Mark Lanegan at the Reading festival in 2012 was another bet that paid off, his stoic stage presence making another new fan with the absolute minimum of effort, and the Rammstein show we saw at another festival was most impressive pyrotechnics I've ever seen, with the flames vaporising the light rain that was falling, and burning with such heat we could feel it on our faces 50m from the stage. But the most surprising thing about that was that she immediately went out and bought every single one of those albums.

And this is a win for everybody, we both enjoy the music, and can luxuriate in it together. But there is also just something truly special about finding a new connection with the love of your life.

Big rock concerts are all about a connection on the macro level, with thousands of people all living in the same moment, all jamming to the same tune. But it's also about those tiny connections, and it's just always better when you can share the love.

Fighting with Frank (part 7 of 13): Felt that, eh?

- All Star Superman #9

Pencils by Frank Quitely

Digitally inked and coloured by Jamie Grant

Written by Grant Morrison

Lettered by Travis Lanham

It was Jim from IT all along!

I watched all of the Cumberbatch/Freeman Sherlock stories recently, and I think they did just the right amount of episodes for that series before it got to much, but one part that still fucking rocks is Andrew Scott's Moriarty, who remains incandescently good. They killed him off brutally early, but brought him back through flashback and mental mind-games and Scott fucking nailed it every time.

When I was watching the first couple of films when they were first broadcast, I was looking out for Moriarty, because he was crushingly inevitable. They already had the Mycroft fake-out, so I was waiting for the mastermind criminal, and took no notice of Jim from IT when he stumbled across the scene, because you never take any notice of the IT geek. 

In hindsight, it was very obvious. But the best twists always are.

Rambo was my first grown up movie

Film classifications used to be a big concern in my life, because I was just a kid, and didn't know what real concerns actually were. But just because I didn't know what was really important in life didn't mean the entire classification system wasn't still a cause of heartbreak and sorrow.

Around these parts, it used to be G for general admission, and GY for the parental guidance thing. But it was the hard Rs that deprived me of seeing great films up on the big screen, and it could be years before I properly caught up.

Me and my mate Nigel completely failed to get into the R13 Terminator when we were 10, and I can still taste the bitter disappointment of not being allowed to see Blade Runner because I was too young, even though it had Han frigging Solo in it.

Things got a bit looser when video players rolled into town, but there were still restrictions at home. I wasn't allowed to watch Beverly Hills Cop after 10 minutes, when his boss showed up and unleashed a tirade of f-bombs, because my Dad was a pretty liberal dude, but he still had his limits.

So it was a big deal when I was allowed to watch Rambo, I was just shy of the 13-year mark, but that was close enough. The profanity was bad, and the sexual stuff was just awkward for all concerned, but cartoonish violence was still a-okay.

This kind of permission must be immediately seized on, before broader issues of parental responsibility come to mind, and we were on our way to the video store as soon as that permission was granted.

The movie itself was no big deal - I was never really into the absurdity of Stallone in the 80s, and it's fair to say that a lot of aspects to the biggest Rambo of them all have not held up well, (although it remains dumbly entertaining, and long as you don't think too hard about it).    

But it was the first taste of something that was made for adults, and a powerful symbol for the changes machine-gunning their way into my life. It's one way to do it. 

What are you shooting at, Clive?

And sometimes there is a film that is just so fucking stupid, you can only watch it in 15-minute bursts before it gets too much. You keep going, because even the dumbest films can redeem themselves, but it can be hard going.

I didn't expect Anon from 2018 to be one of those films, even though it's part of the endless waterfall of straight to streaming efforts. Writer/director Andrew Niccol had done some smart films in the past that did occasionally veer into the realm of the dumb, but walked that line with some skill.

But Anon trips up over that line, right from the start. The very concept of the film - that everybody has implants that lets them see everything anybody else is getting up to, along with helpful heads-up displays showing all the details of the shit they look at - isn't as smart as it thinks it is. For starters, it's a whole new technology that nobody can turn off, even if it's majorly malfunctioning, and everything you look at comes with grating text and a horrible digital ticking sound that would drive everybody nuts in a week.

So far, so Black Mirror, but then Clive Owen's head gets hacked, and he literally can't trust what he's seeing, and it looks like his hallway is on fire, so he pulls out his gun and starts blazing away. Even though he knows it's fake, and even though it's a fucking fire - what does he think bullets are going to do against it? And thinking somebody might be using the flames to attack them is still no fucking excuse for blind gunfire.

I had to take a break after that. That was too much, man.

And then when I get back to it the next day, Clive goes and gets in a fucking car and tries to drive around a busy future metropolis, even though his eyes are still subject to enforced hallucinations. He doesn't get past the first intersection.

I guess you're meant to admire his hard nature, but this blatant dumbarsery, and the only reason these scenes to be there in the film is so other plot elements can play off later - his poor neighbour who nearly gets shot by him is sacrificed so Clive can be framed for the shooting - which is the dumbest part of all.

I do feel foolish, ripping into a fairly nondescript film from seven years ago that literally nobody else cares about. But it took me days to get through something that should have been an easy watch, because I couldn't take that kind of stupid for too long.

Dreaming of Judge Mortis

I've been reading horror comics since before I could actually read, but one of the few to genuinely scare me were the early Dark Judges stories in Judge Dredd, and I know this because I had genuine nightmares about them for years. They were coming for me, and no matter where I would hide, they would find me.

It was only the Bolland versions that counted. Bolland's art is always a detailed delight, but that just made the horrific absurdity of Death, Fear, Fire and Mortis all the more real, with oblivion hiding in the sharpest of shadows. 

They became more of a joke, the more they appeared -  I have no such reaction to the recent muddy, overwrought versions in the Fall of Deadworld comics. But they were absolutely terrifying in their primal glory. 

I still sometimes dream of them coming down the road towards me in bright daylight, and the only way I can ever escape is by waking up.

Beyond post-irony: Heretic and Slow Horses

What does it mean when you're watching a movie or reading a book, and you suddenly start thinking about questions that the story is raising, and then the story answers those exact questions, and kinda makes fun of you for your simple queries.

I've felt like this with some stories for a while - the Buffy TV show used to do this all the time. Especially when I'd watch it stoned with my mate Geoff, and we'd have all sorts of deep philosophical insights about the nature of slaying vampires and the questions it would raise, and then the show would answer those questions straight away, like it had heard our complaints and was putting us in our place.

More recently, I felt it with the movie Heretic, which I thought was a lot of fun, but had Hugh Grant spouting some absolute bullshit. Because he's Hugh fucking Grant, it sounds refined and charming, but you're sitting there wanting one of the characters to refute his obvious bullshit, and then somebody does just that, and points out with great eloquence and passion how fucked up his reasoning is.

The Slow Horses books - which I carved through in a few short months last year - also do it all the time, with author Mick Herron constantly toying with expectations, and then blatantly violating them, and acting surprised that you thought it would be anything different. Sometimes it's the use of a jacket, belonging to a corpse at the start of one book, which then features some very blatant mentions of wearing coats; or even the way that each book ends with a member of Slough House dying in some unfortunate manner, and then in one of the latest ones, it's obviously happened again, only it turns out the character just wants to eat all the fucking chicken in the room.

It's all so clever, and is extremely hard to pull off. But it also feels like a direct conversation between author and audience, an unspoken correspondence of anticipation. It's so far beyond literary irony that we're somewhere new.  I really thought we slipped into a post-ironic age very early on in the 21st century, but where are we now? 

You may feel manipulated as the consumer of this story, but you also know you are in on the game. It  definitely makes everything feel a bit meta, seeing the man behind the curtain like that, but in an entertainment world of dumb-arse retreads and the general same old shit, this kind of post-post-post-irony is always a welcome sack of smart.

How was my 1999?

I'm 24 in 1999, which is just about the last age where I could be a total bum for a while without feeling like a complete loser and a failure at life. It was the last thrust of proper youth, the last time to be free of any responsibilities. It was a fucking good year.

Me and my mates had all been working since we got out of school, for six years straight at that stage, and just could not be fucked anymore, so we chucked in our jobs and went on the dole and lived a leisurely life of few luxuries.

And for most of the year we all just fucking chilled out, watched lots of movies, smoked lots of pot, ate lots of trash food. It was the year of The Matrix and the final volume of The Invisibles, and it felt like all the freaky weird stuff that I'd spent the decade indulging in was coming to some kind of fruition. Things looked good for the new millennium.

I wasn't getting any comics regularly - not even my beloved 2000ad, which I'd given up after some truly diabolical mid-90s progs. I would still get the latest issue of The Invisibles through mail order, and I still never missed anything to do with Love and Rockets, but that was literally it. I would see advertisements for things like Planetary, which looked sexy as fuck, but I was most bothered by the fact I was missing out on Hourman (I read it 10 years later, it was pretty good).

It was the last year of the 20th century (yes, it wasn't technically the last year because there was no year zero, but general consensus can be a powerful thing), and is rightly seen as a stunner of a year for movies. While that sometimes only becomes clear in retrospect, you couldn't walk out of the theatre into some 90s sunlight after seeing something like the Thin Red Line and Fight Club and The Matrix, and not realise it was a mini golden age for movies.

I listened to a lot of Beastie Boys and Portishead and Pulp's This Is Hardcore, and the Best of 1998 CD that Q put out, meaning the main soundtrack to my life was still a year late.

But everything was a year late, and I do wonder if part of my affection for this period is because it was the last time I was ever not connected to the world at all times. I could only get on the internet once a week, at most, and would spend that precious half hour checking out the niche message boards that my friends still posted on, before catching up on the geek news from comicbookresources.com and fuckin' Ain't It Cool, and that was it, there was nothing more.

Blogs weren't even a thing yet, there was no bandwidth for Youtube, and social media was a nightmare for the future, not an aspirational goal.

I still know I'm seeing this through rose coloured glasses. I was still five years away from properly getting my shit together, and going to journalism school, and everything great in my life has come from that decision. And yeah, it was fun times, but we weren't making any money, and couldn't go out or do anything exciting, and by the time winter started to bite, we were all back in employment, because beer doesn't come for free.

So I moved on with my life, and things changed in ways I could never anticipate, and I haven't had to go on a benefit since then. But I can still remember that thrilling freedom of the last year of my youth, before the new century came crashing in.

Fighting with Frank (part 6 of 13): Oh, shut up and stop showing off.

 

- The Authority #20

Art by Frank Quitely

Inks by Trevor Scott

Words by Mark Millar

Colors by David Baron

Letters by Bill O'Neill